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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

SPACE PROBE NEWS Dawn Mars Itokawa Hayabusa

Dawn's Fleeting Fling With Mars

NASA's latest asteroid-chasing spacecraft, named Dawn, was launched in 2007 to explore the dwarf worlds Vesta and Ceres. But if you were aboard that spacecraft right now, you'd be getting a spectacular view of the planet Mars.

That's because, as I type this, Dawn is passing just 341 miles (549 km) from the Red Planet. During this brief encounter Mars's gravity will bend the craft's trajectory by 5° and boost its velocity by about 2,500 miles per hour (1.1 km per second). Had Dawn not encountered Mars en route to the asteroid belt, it would have needed to carry an additional 230 pounds of xenon to fuel its super-efficient ion-powered engines. That would have been too much to bring along, nixing the mission plans.

Mars does more than simply give Dawn a swift kick onward — it provides a handy calibration target for the craft's three scientific instruments: a visible-light camera, a visible and infrared mapping spectrometer, and a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer nicknamed GRaND. (A press release about GRaND's activities is here.)

Because Dawn's approach path is on the dark side of Mars, the best tourist snapshots will come right after the flyby. (For a complete timeline of what happens when, read the interesting and informative online blog written by project manager Marc Raymond.)

But don't expect to see images beamed to Earth right away. To pan across the planet's amazing ocher plains, eons-old craters, and other features, Dawn has had to pivot away from its alignment with Earth. It'll return to its normal cruise attitude and reestablish high-rate communication in a couple of days, when the pretty pictures will start streaming home.

Then, on February 20th, Dawn swings back to view Mars one more time. The planet will be distant and receding, but it'll give flight controllers a view similar to how Vesta will appear when the spacecraft nears Vesta in 2011. It reaches Ceres in 2015.

www.skyandtelescope.com/news/39761122.html

The song Coming Home on a Wing and a Prayer, written in 1943, tells the saga of warplane damaged so badly that it was barely able to limp back to base.

A depiction of Hayabusa's touchdown on the asteroid 25143 Itokawa in November 2005.

Akihiro Ikeshita / JAXA

Right now another crippled craft is heading home, and this one has a lot farther to travel. On February 4th the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency restarted one of four xenon-fueled engines aboard Hayabusa, which suffered multiple malfunctions and was nearly lost in November 2005 during its grab-and-go encounter with asteroid 25143 Itokawa.

JAXA's announcement didn't provide many details. The spacecraft had been coasting toward Earth since November 2007, but it need to increase it speed by 900 miles per hour (400 meter per second) in order to complete its return to Earth in June 2010.

If and when that occurs, Hayabusa (which means "falcon") should eject a sealed capsule designed to parachute safely to the ground. Only then will JAXA engineers know for sure whether any bits of Itokawa lie waiting inside.

When it landed on the asteroid, the craft was supposed to fire a small spherical projectile into the surface in order to drive debris up into a collection chamber. But inexplicably the firing mechanism wasn't activated during its half hour on the surface. No bullet, no sample. Conceivably (fingers crossed), a few particles of dust ended up in the capsule anyway.

But let's not get too optimistic. Hayabusa still has a long road back. Although three of its four engines are still functional, JAXA engineers hope to power the craft for the next 13 months using only one of them — and it's already logged 31,000 hours of operation. As the announcement states, "We are continuing to pay careful attention to our onboard equipment and are doing our utmost to operate [the craft] with the greatest care."

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

What on Earth is wrong with gravity?

The Gist of BBC programme

BBC - Horizon - What on Earth is wrong with gravity?

Key concepts from the programme:

Moon reflector Laser Interferometry Telescope with BUILT IN Laser1000 million billion photons go up10 or 5 come backvery hard experiment1 to 3 centimeters precision measurement of Moon distance40 years of measurements show that actual orbit of moon isdifferent to that predicted by Newton.Moon observation is about 10 meters off Newton predictions.

filmed 28 July 2007

Two galaxies previously named 957 and 561.Identical spectrum = same galaxy,light takes two paths.

Global Position systemsouth of Denver Colorado, GPS Headquarters.In Orbit time itself runs at a different speedthan on the surface of Earth.Extra corrections are regularly dialled-in.

Particle physicist and ex D:Ream keyboard player Dr Brian Cox wants to know why the Universe is built the way it is. He believes the answers lie in the force of gravity. But Newton thought gravity was powered by God, and even Einstein failed to completely solve it. Heading out with his film crew on a road trip across the USA, Brian fires lasers at the moon in Texas, goes mad in the desert in Arizona, encounters the bending of space and time at a maximum security military base, tries to detect ripples in our reality in the swamps of Louisiana and searches for hidden dimensions just outside Chicago.

Particle physicist and ex D:Ream keyboard player Dr Brian Cox takes Horizon on a unique journey of discovery. Brian’s not content with his research at CERN, nor with his collaboration with Danny Boyle on Sunshine providing the inspiration for the character played by Cillian Murphy. Brian wants to discover why the universe is built the way it is and he believes the answers lie in the force of gravity.

Gravity is the thing that keeps our feet on the ground and it was the first force of nature we thought we really understood. Back in 1687, Sir Isaac Newton managed to distil gravity down to one short equation. With it, he could predict how bodies moved under its influence, how the moon orbits the Earth, how the planets orbit the sun and even how stars move about the night sky. But driving out into the wilds of Texas, Brian goes to the McDonald Observatory where astronomers have categorical evidence that Newton wasn’t entirely correct.

Back in 1969, it was Newton’s understanding of gravity that helped get Neil and Buzz to the sea of tranquility. When they came home., the left behind on the moon’s surface some very special mirrors which could be used to put Newton to the test. By firing a laser at these mirrors, scientists like Peter Schelus make incredibly accurate measurements of the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Taking readings over 40 years, we now have a phenomenally precise map of the orbit of the moon. But the orbit of the moon is different to that predicted by Newton. “…It turns out that simple Newton’s laws of gravity really don’t answer all of the questions. You’ve got to explain your observations and Newton’s gravitational theory just doesn’t do it anymore…” In other words, Newton got it wrong.

Although he had his equation, Newton never really had any idea how or even why gravity worked. He simply put that down to God. It was Albert Einstein who came up with a completely new understanding of the Universe and with it, the key to the workings of gravity.

Unlike Newton’s Universe which was pretty much had stuff wafting around empty space, Einstein Universe’s had an internal fabric in which all matter was embedded. This fabric was made of the 3 dimensions of space intricately linked with the fourth dimension of time - the spacetime. In Einstein’s universe, the planets, stars, galaxies actually warp, bend and distort the spacetime. “…Everything that happens in the universe effects the spacetime and the spacetime affects everything that happens in the universe...”

Brian heads out to the famous Kitt Peak Observatory just west of Tucson, Arizona. Looking deep into the heart of the Cosmos, some 7.8 billion light years from Earth, astronomers here witnessed what appeared to be two completely identical galaxies. This baffled them until they realized that there was an intermediate galaxy in the frame. According to Einstein, this nearer galaxy was physically bending the spacetime which caused the light coming from the far off galaxy to get bent, producing the multiple images we see from earth.

Einstein realized that his universe of bendable spacetime could explain the existence of gravity. With spectacular graphics, conceptualizing spacetime as never seen before, Brian explains that the Earth distorts spacetime, and it’s this curving of the fabric of the universe that creates the effect we feel as gravity. The bigger the mass, or the nearer you are to an object, the more curved the spacetime becomes, and so the stronger is the effect of gravity. This may sound like science fiction, but many of us use the bending of spacetime everyday, when we switch on our GPS Sat Nav.

Heading south of Denver, Brian uses the car’s GPS to navigate to the Global Positioning System HQ, a maximum security military instillation just outside Colorado Springs. Guided by Major Bandit Brandt, he is taken round the very room from which the whole GPS network is controlled. To keep the system working, the clocks onboard the satellites up in orbit have to be in synch with time on earth. But up in the reduced gravity of orbit, spacetime is bent in such a way that time ticks faster than time on earth. “…What Einstein said is that the stronger the gravitational field the slower time ticks and the weaker it is the faster time ticks…” For the GPS to work, the controllers have to dial in a time correction, otherwise GPS would drift by around 11km per day and be completely useless.

On Earth and throughout much of the Universe, Einstein’s idea of bending spacetime is an accurate description of how gravity works. But Einstein knew his theory of gravity doesn’t apply to the whole universe. It fails to work in the most violent and turbulent places in the cosmos.

In the swamps of Louisiana, scientists are trying to peer deep into the most brutal corners of the Universe. At the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, head man Joe Giame explains how they hope to use something called ‘gravitational waves’ to observe violent cosmic phenomena. ‘Gravitational waves’ are believed to be created when the spacetime is violently churned up by fast moving massive objects, sending out waves in the spacetime. “…These waves are physical distortions in our reality. You know they really are stretching and contracting the space and time that we’re in…” But so far, this bit of Einstein’s understanding of gravity and how the Universe works has yet to be proved correct.

Einstein has no answers in the dark heart of a black hole, and his idea of gravity completely fails at the Big Bang, the beginning of time. Here the Universe was incredibly hot, incredibly dense, and incredibly small. Much as he tried, Einstein never managed to answer the question of how gravity works when things get very small. “…Einstein’s theory of relativity just can't provide the answer, the maths doesn't work on the smallest distance scales…” But Brian insists that we have to know how gravity works at the smallest distances, if we want to know how it all began.

Brian takes us into the dark world of subatomic particles and the quest for a quantum theory of gravity, a universal theory that will work everywhere in the Cosmos. Quantum mechanics predicts that the force of gravity is ultimately created by the transmission of a particle, which they’ve called the graviton.

Using the Tevatron Particle Accelerator just outside Chicago, scientist Greg Landsberg has been trying to create these illusive gravitons. But in this complex field of science, Greg has a significant challenge on his hands. “…Its amazing that the way to see the graviton is by not observing it, by observing it’s missing…” If gravitons are created, Greg believes they would instantly disappear, vanishing from our reality into alternative dimensions of space. Brian explains that “…what scientists like Greg are proposing is that there can be extra hidden unseen dimensions. It sounds ridiculous and it is impossible to picture, but theoretically It’s possible. And it’s also possible that gravitons can spend most of their time in their extra dimensions…”

For the time being, the quest to find the graviton, and with it the solution to the mystery of gravity continues. Brian is confident we are looking in the right places. “..The solution to a deeper understanding of gravity will certainly lie in the marriage of Einstein’s theory with the quantum theories of sub atomic particles…” But he concedes that “…If there are things that I listen to, you listen to that you think that I just don’t understand that, then you’re in good company because nobody understands it…”

By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse

You think that light is fast? Well, think again. Sometimes it is slower than a crawl.

All schoolchildren know that light is the fastest thing there is. It zips along through empty space at 297,000 km per second (186,000 miles a second). Light from the Sun takes about eight minutes to reach us, from the Moon just over a second, and two million years from the nearest galaxy.

But now a Danish physicist and her team of collaborators have found a way to slow light down to less than 1.6 km per hour (one mile an hour) - slower than a slow walk.

The researchers, led by Dr Lene Hau of the Rowland Institute for Science, and Harvard University, both in the US, said last year that they had slowed light down to 60 km per hour (38 mph). Now, they have gone even further.

Addressing a conference in the US, Dr Hau said that you could almost send out a beam of light, go for a cup of coffee and return in time to see the light come out of the other side of her equipment. "You could almost touch it," she added.

Slow light

The way Dr Hau and her team have slowed down light by a factor of 600 million or so is to use a group of atoms called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). These atoms are cooled to a temperature of only a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature, at which all motion stops.

In a Bose-Einstein condensate, atoms are hardly moving at all. This means that according to the uncertainty principle that rules atoms, they are spread out and overlap. This results in a group identity for the collection of supercold atoms.

And when light passes through such an environment, it will slow down.

Physicists have known for a long time that the speed of light is reduced when it travels though any transparent medium, such as water or glass. Lenses, for example, focus light by allowing it to pass through different thicknesses, thereby slowing it down by differing amounts.

By firing co-ordinated beams of laser light through the BEC, Hau and colleagues have slowed light down to a crawl. Inside the BEC, the so-called refractive index (which measures the slowing of light) becomes enormous: as high as 100 trillion times greater than that of glass.

Slowing down light may have many practical uses in communications, signal processing, television displays and night-vision devices.

As Albert Einstein lay on his deathbed, he asked only for his glasses, his writing implements and his latest equations. He knew he was dying, yet he continued his work. In those final hours of his life, while fading in and out of consciousness, he was working on what he hoped would be his greatest work of all. It was a project of monumental complexity. It was a project that he hoped would unlock the mind of God.

"I want to know God's thoughts""I am not interested in this phenomenon or that phenomenon," Einstein had said earlier in his life. "I want to know God's thoughts – the rest are mere details." But as he lay there dying in Princeton Hospital he must have understood that these were secrets that God was clearly keen to hang on to. The greatest scientist of his age died knowing that he had become isolated from the scientific community; revered on the one hand, ridiculed for this quest on the other.

It was a journey that started 50 years earlier in Berne, Switzerland. Then - in his early 20s - he was a young man struggling to make his mark. His applications to universities throughout Europe had all been rejected. In the end his father had pulled strings to get him a job as a third class clerk evaluating the latest electrical gizmos.

But in his spare time he was formulating the most extraordinary scientific ideas. In a single year - 1905, a year that would become known as his miracle year – he published papers that would redefine how we see our world and universe.

Time is relativeHe confirmed that all matter was composed of molecules – an idea that at the time was controversial. And most famously of all, he published the paper 'On the electrodynamics of moving bodies'. It contained his Theory of Special Relativity and suggested that time - something that had always thought to be unchanging and absolute – was relative. It could speed up or slow down depending on the speed you were travelling. From this paper would come an additional three pages, finished in September of the same year, that would contain the derivation of e=mc², the most famous mathematical equation ever written.

Einstein was on a roll. Ten years after his Theory of Special Relativity, he published his Theory of General Relativity – a piece of work widely acknowledged as his masterpiece. The great 17th century scientist Sir Isaac Newton had described the force of gravity very successfully, but what caused gravity remained a mystery. In this Theory of General Relativity, Einstein suggested that gravity was due to the bending of time and space by massive objects. In 1919 astronomers confirmed this by measuring the bending of starlight around the sun during a solar eclipse.

The battle with quantum mechanicsIn 1921, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize, not for his theories of relativity, but for another paper published in 1905. In this paper, Einstein proposed that light was not simply made up of waves, it could also be thought of as discrete, individual particles or quanta. This discovery would revolutionise physics and chemistry, because it would become one of the foundations of a new science: quantum mechanics.

But during the 1920s the new science of quantum mechanics began to turn the tide against the way Einstein saw the world. Young pretenders in the field of physics had begun to emerge, such as Heisenberg, Bohr and Schrödinger, who are now some of the most famous figures in science. But at the time they were mavericks. They saw quantum mechanics as a brand new way of interpreting everything.

A core element to their new interpretation of the world was that at a fundamental level, everything was unpredictable. You could, for example, accurately tell the speed of a particle but not – at the same time – its position. Or its position but not its speed. It meant that precise predictions were impossible – the best you could hope for was a science based on probabilities.

God does not play diceEinstein's work was underpinned by the idea that the laws of physics were an expression of the divine. This belief led him to think that everything could be described by simple, elegant mathematics and moreover, that once you knew these laws you could describe the universe with absolute accuracy. Einstein loathed the implications of quantum mechanics. It was a clash of ideologies.

The conflict reached a crescendo in the late 1920s at the Solvay Conference in Belgium. There Einstein clashed with the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr over the nature of the universe. Einstein constantly challenged Bohr over the implications of quantum mechanics, but never budged from his belief that "God does not play dice", meaning that nothing would be left to chance in the universe. To which the quantum mechanics community replied: "Einstein, stop telling God what to do with his dice."

The theory of everythingBut Einstein had a trick up his sleeve. He had already begun a piece of work that he believed would ultimately replace quantum mechanics. It would become later known as his theory of everything – it was his attempt to extend general relativity and unite the known forces in the universe.

By completing this theory of everything Einstein hoped he would rid physics of the unpredictability at the heart of quantum mechanics and show that the world was predictable – described by beautiful, elegant mathematics. Just the way he believed God would make the universe. He would show that the way the quantum mechanics community interpreted the world was just plain wrong. It was a project that he would work on for the next 30 years, until the final day of his life.

But while Einstein's theory of everything may be considered to have been a failure, it is an idea that still fascinates and draws some of the brightest minds in physics. Today many believe that String Theory is our best candidate for a theory of everything. But the ultimate irony is that lurking at the heart of String Theory is the very thing that, because of his beliefs, Einstein had been unable to accept: quantum mechanics.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Desperado - Johnny Cash

You're been out riding fences for so long nowOh, you're a hard oneBut I know that you've got your reasonsThese things that are pleasing youCan hurt you somehow

Don't you draw the queen of diamonds boyShe'll beat you if she's ableThe queen of hearts is always your best bet

How it seems to me some fine thingHave been laid upon your tableBut you only want the things you can't get

Desperado. You know you ain't getting youngerYour pain and your hunger are driving you homeAnd freedom, oh freedomWell that's just some people talking

Your prison is walking through this world all alone

Don't your feet get cold in the wintertimeSky won't snow and the sun won't shineIt's hard to tell the night time from the dayYou're losing all your highs and lowsAin't it funny how the feeling goes away

Desperado. Why don't you come to your senses

Come down from your fences open the gateIt may be raining but there's a rainbow above youYou'd better let somebody love youLet somebody love youBefore it's too late

"Desperado" is a song written by Glenn Frey and Don Henley and first recorded by their best-selling American group of all time, rock-country band The Eagles of Laurel Canyon, North Hollywood, CA 91605. The song first appeared on the 1973 album Desperado, and has later appeared on numerous compilation albums by the band.

On this beautiful song, lead vocalist Don Henley, accompanied by Glenn Frey on piano, begs the subject of the song, a "desperado", to return home, and tells him (probably from his/their own experience) that the things he enjoys doing will hurt him eventually.

While this is one of the Eagles' signature songs, it was never released as a single. Nevertheless, "Desperado" was voted #494 in the List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and has since been recorded and performed by a variety of musicians including popular vocalist, entertainer and multiple Grammy Award-winner, The Eagles. former employer, Linda Ronstadt, on her 1973 album Don't Cry Now, vocal and instrumental brother-sister duo The Carpenters on their 1975 album Horizon, as well as American pop country music singer-songwriter and American Idol #4, Carrie Underwood, at the 2007 Grammy Awards.

Johnny Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 - September 12, 2003) was a Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter and one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Primarily a country music artist, his songs and sound spanned many other genres including rockabilly and rock and roll (especially early in his career), as well as blues, folk and gospel.

Cash was known for his deep, distinctive bass-baritone voice, the "freight train" sound of his Tennessee Three backing band, his demeanor, and his dark clothing, which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black". He traditionally started his concerts with the introduction "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash".

Much of Cash's music, especially that of his later career, echoed themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption. His signature songs include "I Walk the Line", "Folsom Prison Blues", "Ring of Fire", "Get Rhythm", "Hurt" and "Man in Black". He also recorded humorous songs, such as "One Piece at a Time" and "A Boy Named Sue",

a duet with June Carter called "Jackson", as well as railroad songs such as "Hey Porter" and "Rock Island Line."

He sold over 90 million albums in his nearly fifty-year career and came to occupy a "commanding position in music history".

Heritage

Cash was of Scottish royal descent but he learned this only upon researching his ancestry. After a chance meeting with former Falkland laird, Major Michael Crichton-Stuart, he traced the Cash family tree to 11th century Fife, Scotland. Scotland's Cash Loch bears the name of his family.

He had believed in his younger days that he was mainly Irish and partially Native American (he had been told he was one-quarter Cherokee). Even after learning he had no Native American ancestry, Cash's empathy and compassion for Native Americans was unabated. These feelings were expressed in several of his songs, including "Apache Tears" and "The Ballad of Ira Hayes", and on his album, Bitter Tears.

Early life

Johnny Cash was born J. R. Cash in Kingsland, Arkansas to Ray and Carrie (née Rivers) Cash, and raised in Dyess, Arkansas.

Cash was reportedly given the name "J.R." because his parents could not agree on a name, only on initials. When he enlisted in the United States Air Force, the military would not accept initials as his name, so he adopted John R. Cash as his legal name. In 1955, when signing with Sun Records, he took Johnny Cash as his stage name. His friends and in-laws generally called him John, while his blood relatives usually continued to call him J.R.

Cash was one of seven children: Jack, Joanne Cash Yates, Louise Garrett, Reba Hancock, Roy, and Tommy. His younger brother, Tommy Cash, also became a successful country artist.

By the age of five, J.R. was working in the cotton fields, singing along with his family as they worked. The family farm was flooded on at least one occasion, which later inspired him to write the song "Five Feet High and Rising". His family's economic and personal struggles during the Depression inspired many of his songs, especially those about other people facing similar difficulties.

Cash was very close to his brother Jack, who was two years older. In 1944, Jack was pulled into a whirling table saw in the mill where he worked, and cut almost in two. He suffered for over a week before he died. Cash often spoke of the horrible guilt he felt over this incident. According to Cash: The Autobiography, his father was away that morning, but he and his mother, and Jack himself, all had premonitions or a sense of foreboding about that day, causing his mother to urge Jack to skip work and go fishing with his brother. Jack insisted on working, as the family needed the money. On his deathbed, Jack said he had visions of heaven and angels. Decades later, Cash spoke of looking forward to meeting his brother in heaven. He wrote that he had seen his brother many times in his dreams, and that Jack always looked two years older than whatever age Cash himself was at that moment.

Cash's early memories were dominated by gospel music and radio. Taught by his mother and a childhood friend, Johnny began playing guitar and writing songs as a young boy. In high school he sang on a local radio station; decades later he released an album of traditional gospel songs, called My Mother's Hymn Book. He was also significantly influenced by traditional Irish music that he heard performed weekly by Dennis Day on the Jack Benny radio program.

Cash enlisted in the United States Air Force. After basic training at Lackland Air Force Base and technical training at Brooks Air Force Base, both in San Antonio, Texas, Cash was assigned to a U.S. Air Force Security Service unit, assigned as a morse code decoder on Russian Army transmissions, at Landsberg, Germany. On July 3, 1954, he was honorably discharged as a staff sergeant. Then, he returned to Texas.

First marriage

While in Air Force training, on July 18, 1951, Cash met 17 year-old Vivian Liberto at a roller skating rink in San Antonio, Texas. They dated for three weeks, until Cash was deployed to Germany for a three year tour. During that time, the couple exchanged over ten thousand pages of love letters. On August 7, 1954, one month after his discharge, they were married at St. Anne's Catholic church in San Antonio. They had four daughters: Rosanne (born May 24, 1955), Kathy (born April 16, 1956), Cindy (born July 29, 1958), and Tara (born August 24, 1961). But Cash's drug and alcohol abuse, constant touring, and affairs with other women (including future wife June Carter) led Liberto to file for divorce in 1966.

June Carter

In 1968, 18 years after they had first met backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, Cash proposed to June Carter, an established country singer, during a live performance in London, Ontario, marrying on March 1, 1968. He had proposed numerous times, but she had always refused. They had only one child together, Johnny Carter Cash (born March 3, 1970). They continued to work together, and tour, for thirty-five years, until Carter died in 2003. Cash died less than four months after. Carter co-wrote one of his biggest hits, 'Ring of Fire', and they together won two grammies for their duets.

Career

Early career

In 1954, the couple moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he sold appliances while studying to be a radio announcer. At night he played with guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant. Perkins and Grant were known as the Tennessee Two. Cash worked up the courage to visit the Sun Records studio, hoping to get a recording contract. After auditioning for Sam Phillips, singing mostly gospel songs, Phillips told him to "go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell." Cash eventually won over Phillips with new songs delivered in his early frenetic style. His first recordings at Sun, "Hey Porter" and "Cry Cry Cry", were released in 1955 and met with reasonable success on the country hit parade.

Cash's next record, Folsom Prison Blues, made the country Top 5, and "I Walk the Line" became No. 1 on the country charts and entered the pop charts Top 20. Following "I Walk the Line" was "Home of the Blues", recorded in July 1957. That same year Cash became the first Sun artist to release a long-playing album. Although he was Sun's most consistently best-selling and prolific artist at that time, Cash felt constrained by his contract with the small label. Elvis Presley had already left Sun, and Phillips was focusing most of his attention and promotion on Jerry Lee Lewis. The following year Cash left the label to sign a lucrative offer with Columbia Records, where his single "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" became one of his biggest hits.

In the early 1960s, Cash toured with the Carter Family, which by this time regularly included Mother Maybelle's daughters, Anita, June and Helen. June, whom Cash would eventually marry, later recalled admiring Johnny from afar during these tours.

Outlaw image

As his career was taking off in the early 1960s, Cash started drinking heavily and became addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates. For a brief time, he shared an apartment in Nashville with Waylon Jennings, who was heavily addicted to amphetamines. Cash used the uppers to stay awake during tours. Friends joked about his "nervousness" and erratic behavior, many ignoring the warning signs of his worsening drug addiction. In a behind the scenes look at The Johnny Cash Show, Cash claims to have "tried every drug there was to try."Johnny Cash with guitar in 1958

Although in many ways spiraling out of control, Cash's frenetic creativity was still delivering hits. His rendition of "Ring of Fire" was a crossover hit, reaching No. 1 on the country charts and entering the Top 20 on the pop charts. The song was written by June Carter and Merle Kilgore. The song was originally performed by Carter's sister, but the signature mariachi-style horn arrangement was provided by Cash, who said that it had come to him in a dream.

In June 1965, his truck caught fire due to an overheated wheel bearing, triggering a forest fire that burnt several hundred acres in Los Padres National Forest in California. When the judge asked Cash why he did it, Cash said, "I didn't do it, my truck did, and it's dead, so you can't question it." The fire destroyed 508 acres (2.06 km2), burning the foliage off three mountains and killing 49 of the refuge's 53 endangered condors. Cash was unrepentant: "I don't care about your damn yellow buzzards." The federal government sued him and was awarded $125,172. Johnny eventually settled the case and paid $82,001. Cash said he was the only person ever sued by the government for starting a forest fire.

Although Cash carefully cultivated a romantic outlaw image, he never served a prison sentence. Despite landing in jail seven times for misdemeanors, each stay lasted only a single night. His most infamous run-in with the law occurred while on tour in 1965, when he was arrested by a narcotics squad in El Paso, Texas. The officers suspected that he was smuggling heroin from Mexico, but it was prescription narcotics and amphetamines that the singer had hidden inside his guitar case. Because they were prescription drugs rather than illegal narcotics, he received a suspended sentence.Johnny Cash and his second wife, June

Cash was also arrested on May 11, 1965, in Starkville, Mississippi, for trespassing late at night onto private property to pick flowers. (This incident gave the spark for the song "Starkville City Jail", which he spoke about on his live At San Quentin prison album.)

In the mid 1960s, Cash released a number of concept albums, including Ballads Of The True West (1965), an experimental double record mixing authentic frontier songs with Cash's spoken narration, and Bitter Tears (1964), with songs highlighting the plight of the Native Americans. His drug addiction was at its worst at this point, and his destructive behavior led to a divorce from his first wife and canceled performances.

In 1967, Cash's duet with Carter, "Jackson", won a Grammy Award.

Cash quit using drugs in 1968, after a spiritual epiphany in the Nickajack Cave, when he attempted to commit suicide while under the heavy influence of drugs. He descended deeper into the cave, trying to lose himself, when he passed out on the floor. When he awoke, he had a change of heart and managed to struggle out of the cave by following a faint light and slight breeze. To him, it was his own rebirth. June, Maybelle, and Ezra Carter moved into Cash's mansion for a month to help him defeat his addiction. Cash proposed onstage to June at a concert at the London Gardens in London, Ontario on February 22, 1968; the couple married a week later (on March 1) in Franklin, Kentucky. June had agreed to marry Cash after he had 'cleaned up'. Rediscovering his Christian faith, taking an "altar call" in Evangel Temple, a small church in the Nashville area, Cash chose this church over many larger celebrity churches in the Nashville area because he said that there he was treated like just another parishioner and not a celebrity.

Folsom Prison BluesCash felt great compassion for prisoners. He began performing concerts at various prisons starting in the late 1960s. These performances led to a pair of highly successful live albums, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (1968) and Johnny Cash at San Quentin (1969).

The Folsom Prison record was introduced by a rendition of his classic "Folsom Prison Blues", while the San Quentin record included the crossover hit single "A Boy Named Sue", a Shel Silverstein-penned novelty song that reached No. 1 on the country charts and No. 2 on the U.S. Top Ten pop charts. The AM versions of the latter contained a couple of profanities which were edited out. The modern CD versions are unedited and uncensored and thus also longer than the original vinyl albums, though they still retain the audience reaction overdubs of the originals.

In addition to his performances at U.S. prisons, Cash also performed at the Österåker Prison in Sweden in 1972. The live album På Österåker ("At Österåker") was released in 1973. Between the songs, Cash can be heard speaking Swedish, which was greatly appreciated by the inmates.

"The Man in Black"Cash advocated prison reform at his July 1972 meeting with United States President Richard Nixon.

From 1969 to 1971, Cash starred in his own television show, The Johnny Cash Show, on the ABC network. The Statler Brothers opened up for him in every episode; the Carter Family and rockabilly legend Carl Perkins were also part of the regular show entourage. However, Cash also enjoyed booking more contemporary performers as guests; such notables included Neil Young, Louis Armstrong, James Taylor, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton (then leading Derek and the Dominos), and Bob Dylan.

Cash had met with Dylan in the mid 1960s and became closer friends when they were neighbors in the late 1960s in Woodstock, New York. Cash was enthusiastic about reintroducing the reclusive Dylan to his audience. Cash sang a duet with Dylan on Dylan's country album Nashville Skyline and also wrote the album's Grammy-winning liner notes.

Another artist who received a major career boost from The Johnny Cash Show was songwriter Kris Kristofferson, who was beginning to make a name for himself as a singer/songwriter. During a live performance of Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", Cash refused to change the lyrics to suit network executives, singing the song with its references to marijuana intact: "On a Sunday morning sidewalk / I'm wishin', Lord, that I was stoned."

By the early 1970s, he had crystallized his public image as "The Man in Black". He regularly performed dressed all in black, wearing a long black knee-length coat. This outfit stood in contrast to the costumes worn by most of the major country acts in his day: rhinestone suit and cowboy boots. In 1971, Cash wrote the song "Man in Black", to help explain his dress code: "We're doing mighty fine I do suppose/In our streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes/But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back/Up front there ought to be a man in black."

He and his band had initially worn black shirts because that was the only matching color they had among their various outfits. He wore other colors on stage early in his career, but he claimed to like wearing black both on and off stage. He stated that, political reasons aside, he simply liked black as his on-stage color. To this day, the United States Navy's winter blue service uniform is referred to by sailors as "Johnny Cashes," as the uniform's shirt, tie, and trousers are solid black.

In the mid 1970s, Cash's popularity and number of hit songs began to decline, but his autobiography (the first of two), titled Man in Black, was published in 1975 and sold 1.3 million copies. A second, Cash: The Autobiography, appeared in 1997. His friendship with Billy Graham led to the production of a movie about the life of Jesus, The Gospel Road, which Cash co-wrote and narrated. The decade saw his religious conviction deepening, and he made many evangelical appearances.

He also continued to appear on television, hosting an annual Christmas special on CBS throughout the 1970s. Later television appearances included a role in an episode of Columbo. He also appeared with his wife on an episode of Little House on the Prairie entitled "The Collection" and gave a performance as John Brown in the 1985 Civil War television mini-series North and South.

He was friendly with every United States President starting with Richard Nixon. He was closest with Jimmy Carter, who became a very close friend. He stated that he found all of them personally charming, noting that this was probably essential to getting oneself elected.

When invited to perform at the White House for the first time in 1972, President Richard Nixon's office requested that he play "Okie from Muskogee" (a satirical Merle Haggard song about people who despised youthful drug users and war protesters) and "Welfare Cadillac" (a Guy Drake song that derides the integrity of welfare recipients). Cash declined to play either song and instead played a series of more left-leaning, politically charged songs, including "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" (about a brave Native-American World War II veteran who was mistreated upon his return to Arizona), and his own compositions, "What is Truth?" and "Man in Black". Cash claimed that the reasons for denying Nixon's song choices were not knowing them and having fairly short notice to rehearse them, rather than any political reason.

From left to right Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, who formed the country music supergroup, The Highwaymen

In 1980, Cash became the Country Music Hall of Fame's youngest living inductee at age forty-eight, but during the 1980s his records failed to make a major impact on the country charts, although he continued to tour successfully. In the mid 1980s, he recorded and toured with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson as The Highwaymen, making two hit albums.

During this period, Cash appeared as an actor in a number of television films. In 1981, he starred in The Pride of Jesse Hallam. Cash won fine reviews for his work in this film that called attention to adult illiteracy. Also in 1981, Cash appeared as the 'very special guest star' in an episode of the Muppet Show. In 1983, Cash appeared as a heroic sheriff in Murder In Coweta County, which co-starred Andy Griffith as his nemesis. This film was based on a real-life Georgia murder case. Cash had tried for years to make the film, for which he won acclaim.

Cash relapsed into addiction after being administered painkillers for a serious abdominal injury in 1983 caused by an unusual incident in which he was kicked and wounded by an ostrich he kept on his farm.

At a hospital visit in 1988, this time to watch over Waylon Jennings (who was recovering from a heart attack), Jennings suggested that Cash have himself checked into the hospital for his own heart condition. Doctors recommended preventive heart surgery, and Cash underwent double bypass surgery in the same hospital. Both recovered, although Cash refused to use any prescription painkillers, fearing a relapse into dependency. Cash later claimed that during his operation, he had what is called a "near death experience". He said he had visions of Heaven that were so beautiful that he was angry when he woke up alive.

Cash's recording career and his general relationship with the Nashville establishment were at an all-time low in the 1980s. He realized that his record label of nearly 30 years, Columbia, was growing indifferent to him and wasn't properly marketing him (he was "invisible" during that time, as he said in his autobiography). Cash recorded an intentionally awful song to protest, a self-parody. "Chicken in Black" was about Johnny's brain being transplanted into a chicken. Ironically, the song turned out to be a larger commercial success than any of his other recent material. Nevertheless, he was hoping to kill the relationship with the label before they did, and it was not long after "Chicken in Black" that Columbia and Cash parted ways.

In 1986, Cash returned to Sun Studios in Memphis to team up with Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins to create the album Class of '55. This was not the first time he had teamed up with Lewis and Perkins at Sun Studios. On December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley dropped in on Phillips to pay a social visit while Perkins was in the studio cutting new tracks, with Lewis backing him on piano. Cash was also in the studio and the four started an impromptu jam session. Phillips left the tapes running and the recordings, almost half of which were gospel songs, survived and have been released on CD under the title Million Dollar Quartet. Tracks also include Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man", Pat Boone's "Don't Forbid Me", and Elvis doing an impersonation of Jackie Wilson (who was then with Billy Ward and the Dominoes) singing "Don't Be Cruel".

In 1986, Cash published his only novel, Man in White, a book about Saul and his conversion to become the Apostle Paul. He also recorded Johnny Cash Reads The Complete New Testament in 1990.

American RecordingsJohnny Cash sings a duet with a Navy lieutenant c.1987.

HighwaymenAfter Columbia Records dropped Cash from his recording contract, he had a short and unsuccessful stint with Mercury Records from 1987 to 1991 (see Johnny Cash discography).

In 1991, Cash sang lead vocals on a cover version of "Man in Black" for the Christian punk band One Bad Pig's album I Scream Sunday.

His career was rejuvenated in the 1990s, leading to popularity among a younger audience not traditionally interested in country music. In 1993, he sang the vocal on U2's "The Wanderer" for their album Zooropa. Although he was no longer sought after by major labels, Cash was approached by producer Rick Rubin and offered a contract with Rubin's American Recordings label, better known for rap and hard rock.

Under Rubin's supervision, he recorded the album American Recordings (1994) in his living room, accompanied only by his guitar. That guitar was a Martin dreadnought guitar - one of many Cash played throughout his career. The album featured several covers of contemporary artists selected by Rubin and had much critical and commercial success, winning a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Cash wrote that his reception at the 1994 Glastonbury Festival was one of the highlights of his career. This was the beginning of a decade of music industry accolades and surprising commercial success.

Cash and his wife appeared on a number of episodes of the popular television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman starring Jane Seymour. The actress thought so highly of Cash that she later named one of her twin sons after him. He lent his voice for a cartoon cameo in an episode of The Simpsons, with his voice as that of a coyote that guides Homer on a spiritual quest. In 1996, Cash released a sequel to American Recordings, Unchained, and enlisted the accompaniment of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which won a Grammy for Best Country Album. Cash, believing he did not explain enough of himself in his 1975 autobiography Man in Black, wrote another autobiography in 1997 entitled Cash: The Autobiography.

Last years and death

In 1997, Cash was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease Shy-Drager syndrome. The diagnosis was later altered to autonomic neuropathy associated with diabetes. This illness forced Cash to curtail his touring. He was hospitalized in 1998 with severe pneumonia, which damaged his lungs. The albums American III: Solitary Man (2000) and American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002) contained Cash's response to his illness in the form of songs of a slightly more somber tone than the first two American albums. The video that was released for "Hurt", a song by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, fit Cash's view of his past and feelings of regret. The video for the song, from American IV, is now generally recognized as "his epitaph," and received particular critical and popular acclaim.

June Carter Cash died on May 15, 2003, at the age of seventy-three. June had told Cash to keep working, so he continued to record and even performed a couple of surprise shows at the Carter Family Fold outside Bristol, Virginia. (The July 5, 2003 concert was his final public appearance.) At the June 21, 2003 concert, before singing "Ring of Fire", Cash read a statement about his late wife that he had written shortly before taking the stage. He spoke of how June's spirit was watching over him and how she had come to visit him before going on stage. He barely made it through the song. Despite his poor health, he spoke of looking forward to the day when he could walk again and toss his wheelchair into the river near his home.

Johnny Cash died less than four months after his wife, on September 12, 2003, while hospitalized at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. He was interred next to his wife in Hendersonville Memory Gardens near his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee. He was 71.

On May 24, 2005, Vivian Liberto, Cash's first wife and the mother of Rosanne Cash, and three other daughters, died from surgery to remove lung cancer. It was Rosanne Cash's fiftieth birthday.

His stepdaughter, Rosie (Nix) Adams and another passenger were found dead on a bus in Montgomery County, Tennessee, on October 24, 2003. It was speculated that the deaths may have been caused by carbon monoxide from the lanterns in the bus. Adams was 45 when she died. She was buried in the Hendersonville Memorial Gardens, Hendersonville, Tennessee, near her mother and stepfather.

In June 2005, his lakeside home on Caudill Drive in Hendersonville, Tennessee, went up for sale by the Cash estate. In January 2006, the house was sold to Bee Gees vocalist Barry Gibb and wife Linda Gibb and titled in their Florida limited liability company for $2.3 million. The listing agent was Cash's younger brother, Tommy Cash. The home was destroyed by fire on April 10, 2007.

One of Johnny Cash's final collaborations with producer Rick Rubin, entitled American V: A Hundred Highways, was released posthumously on July 4, 2006. The album debuted in the #1 position on Billboard Magazines Top 200 album chart for the week ending July 22, 2006. Enough of Cash's music was left to put together a posthumous album which he had helped plan. The album, American VI, is planned for release sometime in 2009.1957 Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar1958 Sings the Songs That Made Him Famous1959 Greatest!1960 Sings Hank Williams1961 Now Here's Johnny Cash1962 All Aboard the Blue Train1964 The Original Sun Sound of Johnny Cash1969 Get Rhythm1969 Original Golden Hits, Volume I1969 Story Songs of the Trains and Rivers1970 Showtime1970 The Singing Storyteller1970 Original Golden Hits, Volume II1970 Johnny Cash: The Legend1970 The Rough Cut King of Country Music1970 Sunday Down South1971 Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music1971 Original Golden Hits, Volume III

Columbia Records

Cash recorded the bulk of his catalog with Columbia. Many of these albums feature previously released material paired with new material

1959 The Fabulous Johnny Cash1959 Hymns by Johnny Cash1959 Songs of Our Soil1960 Ride This Train1960 Now, There Was a Song!1961 The Lure of the Grand Canyon1962 Hymns from the Heart1962 The Sound of Johnny Cash1963 Blood, Sweat, and Tears 801963 Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash 1 26 Gold1963 The Christmas Spirit 71964 I Walk the Line 1 53 Gold1964 Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian 2 471965 Orange Blossom Special 3 491965 Sings the Ballads of the True West1966 Everybody Loves a Nut 5 881966 Happiness Is You 101967 Carryin' On with Johnny Cash and June Carter 5 1941968 From Sea to Shining Sea 91968 At Folsom Prison (live) 1 13 3× Multi-Platinum1968 Heart of Cash1968 The Holy Land 6 541969 At San Quentin (live) 1 1 3× Multi-Platinum1970 Hello, I'm Johnny Cash 1 6 Gold1970 The Johnny Cash Show (live) 1 44 Gold1970 I Walk the Line - Movie Soundtrack 9 1761970 Little Fauss and Big Halsy - Movie Soundtrack 2091971 Man in Black 1 561972 A Thing Called Love 2 1121972 America: A 200-Year Salute in Story and Song 3 1761972 The Johnny Cash Family Christmas1972 International Superstar1973 På Österåker (live)1973 Any Old Wind That Blows 5 1881973 The Gospel Road 12 2051973 Johnny Cash and His Woman 321974 Ragged Old Flag 161974 Junkie and the Juicehead Minus Me 481975 The Children's Album1975 Sings Precious Memories1975 John R. Cash1975 Look at Them Beans 381975 Strawberry Cake (live) 331976 One Piece at a Time 2 1851977 The Last Gunfighter Ballad 291977 The Rambler 311978 I Would Like to See You Again 231978 Gone Girl1979 Silver 281980 Rockabilly Blues1980 Classic Christmas1981 The Baron 24 2011982 The Adventures of Johnny Cash1983 Johnny 991985 Rainbow

Independent label Gospel / Christmas albums

1979 A Believer Sings the Truth 43 Cachet1984 I Believe1986 Believe in Him Word1991 Johnny Cash Country Christmas Delta1992 Return to the Promised Land Renaissance

Mercury Records1987 Johnny Cash Is Coming to Town 361987 Classic Cash: Hall of Fame Series1988 Water from the Wells of Home 481989 Boom Chicka Boom1991 The Mystery of Life 701994 Wanted Man1996 Johnny Cash: The Hits 751998 The Best of Johnny Cash2000 The Mercury Years2002 Johnny Cash & Friends

American Recordings

The American Recordings series is produced by Rick Rubin and contains the only newly-recorded material released after 1990. These albums are known for their relaxed, laidback feel and for featuring many covers and collaborations with other well-known artists. One song from these sessions, "A Satisfied Mind," was used in the Tarantino movie Kill Bill Volume 2 and has only been released on the soundtrack.